


The Historians' Craft Club

by lirin



Category: Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Genre: F/M, Fiber Arts, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 06:10:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4510809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lirin/pseuds/lirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After returning from a long drop, Ned’s plans for the afternoon consist of nothing more demanding than a nap.  This would definitely exclude both contending with bits of sheep and being challenged to identify crocheted objects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Historians' Craft Club

**Author's Note:**

  * For [karrenia_rune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/gifts).



> Many thanks to my beta drayton for lots of helpful feedback and contributing some perfect turns of phrase! And thanks as well to elshelbey for a great deal of educational feedback specifically on the fiber processing elements of the story. Any remaining errors are of course my own.

I found life as a married historian surprisingly similar to life as an unmarried historian. Embarking upon a new project, I devoted several weeks to researching my destination time period. (Really! Actual weeks! Lady Schrapnell had become considerably more reasonable since the cathedral's dedication.) I wrote papers and went to tutorials whenever I was not out on assignment. When my drop date suddenly got moved up by two days, I left the books and papers and handhelds that I'd been using for research spread all over the house. By the time I returned home a week later, I was exhausted from almost non-stop interaction with the contemps. I staggered into the house and promptly tripped over the projects that my wife had spread all over on top of the books I'd left out. Come to think of it, that last part was new.

“Verity?” I asked cautiously, backing away from a precarious pile of half a dozen tomes that had somehow ended up on the floor immediately inside our front door. The topmost book had some colorful objects sticking out of it...they appeared to be skeins of wool that had been repurposed as inefficient bookmarks.

“Oh, Ned, is that you already?” Verity called. She poked her head out of the kitchen. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you’d be back until this evening. The historians’ craft club is going to be meeting here this afternoon; I hope you don’t mind.”

“Craft club?” For a moment I wondered if I had time-lag. I started trying to think of phrases that sounded similar—draft law? cranberry scone?—but Verity was nodding, so I’d heard correctly.

“Yes, they’ll be here any minute.” And sure enough, her words were followed by a tap on the door. Verity started towards it, but was halted by a large basket, full of skeins of yarn, balanced on top of what I was almost sure was my first edition copy of _Murder Must Advertise_. I had left it out without much thought a week prior, but suddenly I wished I’d had much more consideration for its age and fragility. “Would you mind getting that?” Verity asked, pushing the basket aside only to be immediately stymied by a second smaller basket abutting it.

As Verity would obviously be some time crossing the room while I was still barely a step inside the room myself, I agreed that this seemed the best plan and opened the door. Engle from Medieval was there, her arms full of something that looked like a sheep and certainly smelled like one.

“Hello, Ned!” she said with a smile. “Will you be joining us today?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’ve only just—watch out for that stack of books!”

It was too late. She stumbled over the exact same pile that I had, but (due to the aforementioned armful of sheep) was unable to catch herself and landed hard on the floor. Grayish-white tufts landed all around us like snow as I reached out a hand to help her up.

“Thanks,” she said. “Would you mind helping me pick this up?” She handed me a few sheepy lumps. “At least I hadn’t combed it yet, so there’s not much work lost.”

Verity had finally made her way across the room. “So glad you could make it, Kivrin,” she said. “Where did you manage to find a fleece?”

“When I was first studying anything and everything I’d need to know to go to the Middle Ages, I made a few connections,” Kivrin explained. “One was a sheep farm in the East Midlands, where I learned to spin on a spindle and a great wheel. They called me a couple of days ago and said they were shearing and I could have a fleece if I wanted it, so I decided it was a good time to practice spinning again.”

“So this is directly off of a sheep?” I asked, wishing she’d mentioned that before I had touched so much of it.

“Oh no, I’ve washed it.”

I sniffed at it and wrinkled my nose. “Are you sure? It smells awfully sheepy.”

She glared at me. “You should have smelled it before I washed it. It barely smells at all now.”

Another sniff left me unconvinced, but I decided it would be rude to argue. I don’t pick fights with women smaller than me—ostensibly because I’m too chivalrous for that, but also because you never know when they’ll turn out to be a lot stronger than they look. Kivrin didn’t seem the type to hit somebody for insulting her sheep, but I didn’t want to risk it. “Err...let me help you with that,” I said as she approached the settee, which was still piled with boxes of holos that I had been researching.

“Oh would you?” she said. “Thanks! I’m just combing the locks individually right now; it should be easy for you to figure out how.” As I tossed the boxes on the floor, she extended a fuzzy handful towards me. When I took it automatically, she followed up with two sticks bristling with spikes—they didn’t look like anything I’d ever want to use for a comb.

All I had actually meant by my offer was that I’d help her find somewhere to sit, but it seemed churlish to back out now, and I didn’t have anything better to do with my time. I hadn’t seen Verity in weeks, so I’d rather spend time where she was, and currently that was the craft club, all two people of it.

Speaking of Verity, she seemed to have dodged all the obstacles and made it across the room, which was good because there was another knock at the door, and I was currently stuck behind my boxes of holos. (Why had I kept them all? None of them had been particularly helpful.)

“Girls, this is my husband Ned,” Verity said as she ushered two undergraduate historians through the maze of books between the door and the seating area. “Ned, this is Olivia—she’s focusing on the 1960s and ’70s—and this is Polly, who hopes to go to World War II. Olivia, I found some vintage crochet thread from 2030 for you; it’s in the basket by the kitchen. It’s closer to what you’d use than the rayocotton they use now. Polly, I found a knitting pattern you should look at; it’s just over here.”

“I didn’t realize there were so many historians focusing on handcrafts,” I commented, gingerly tugging at my bit of fleece with the comb. The fiber looked much clumpier than Kivrin’s, but on the other hand the way she was swinging her comb seemed less than safe to me, so I considered the tradeoff worthwhile.

“Oh, that’s not our focus,” Kivrin said. “Well, except Olivia. But I don’t think the rest of us are particularly interested in crafts at all. We just don’t want to be revealed as imposters ten minutes after we leave the net because we don’t know which end is up on a spindle.”

“Or try to knit with crochet hooks,” Olivia added. She pulled a chair over and started fishing through the basket of crochet thread. “Fortunately for me, my time period is full of young people discovering handcrafts for the first time, so I dabble in everything but I don’t need to convince people that I’ve been doing it since childhood, as Kivrin might.” She selected a ball of thread from all the other virtually identical balls of thread and produced a crochet hook from somewhere. “I’m studying the beginnings of the ‘back to the land’ movement in England. Most of the contemps I’ll be with had a strong belief in self sufficiency and wanted to make everything themselves, so I’m studying gardening and raising animals but also spinning, weaving, knitting, sewing, quilting—and of course crocheting.” She raised her crocheting to show it off. It looked to me like a wavy chain with some tangly bits sticking off the sides. I’d had to learn to tell most handcrafts apart back in my jumble sale days—Lady Schrapnell would not have been pleased if someone brought back a knitted altar cloth when the one she wanted was tatted—but I still found them somewhat alarming. Women always seemed to expect you to tell both what craft they were doing and what the finished product would look like, just from a glance at whatever half-formed wisps they were holding, accompanied by (if you were lucky) a sentence of explanation and some grandiose waving of hands. “Can you tell what it is?” Olivia asked, proving me correct.

“It’s crocheted,” I said. Points for one out of two, at least.

“Well of course it is,” she said in a distinctly unimpressed tone. “But what is it?”

I stared at the tangle. I could think of several uses for it—starting with using it as a fishing lure, where it would hopefully fall off into the briny depths nevermore to annoy me—but all my ideas seemed unlikely to be correct. Perhaps a doily. Women were always making doilies in the Victorian era; would that still be true more than half a century later? I opened my mouth to guess—

“How is your bookmark progressing, Olivia?”

—and was once again reminded how thankful I was to have Verity in my life.

“I think I’ve figured out how to get it to stay flat this time,” said Olivia. She moved her basket to the side so Polly could pull up a chair, while Verity pulled a stool over next to the settee and picked up a basket of her own.

“Ned, would you hand me that black wool?” she asked, pulling out a project of her own. It was a stiff loosely-woven fabric with black and white stitching half covering it. I rather thought I’d seen similar work before. Tapestry? Or was it canvaswork?

“Is that needlepoint?” Polly asked.

“Yes, it is,” Verity said. Oh well. At least I’d gotten crochet right. “But in my time period it’s called canvaswork, so I have to remember to call it that. The American term ‘needlepoint’ didn’t become ubiquitous here until at least the beginning of the 21st century.” 

Back to two out of three! Things were looking up. “What are you making?” I asked.

“Don’t you recognize her?” Verity held up the canvas to face me. “It’s Penwiper!”

I considered it debatable whether the random black and white splotches should really be expected to be recognizable as a cat, much less one specific cat; but I have spent enough time in sitting rooms making conversation with women doing fancywork to know that this was one point I should probably not argue. “Oh, of course! I should have recognized her at once, because Penwiper is black and white just like your yarn. Is that her paw?”

Her look gave me ample warning that I had should have stopped while I was ahead. “That’s her ear.”

Two out of four. I gave her a look that I hoped communicated “I am extremely interested in your handiwork despite my unfortunate slip of the tongue” and grabbed another of Kivrin’s sheepy bits to hack at. “When did you learn to do needlepoint—canvaswork? Did you learn when prepping for an assignment, or did you already know how?”

Verity’s needle slipped back and forth through the canvas like a really sharp knife going through...well, just about anything, I suppose. I believe butter is traditional. She smiled and kept stitching while she answered me. “Needlepoint has gone through surges of interest every few decades, most recently in the 1970s and 2020s. My mother was caught up in the latter craze and made quite a few projects. Ever since I can remember, there were some cushions in my bedroom with my initials, that she made from a popular Felicity Hall pattern. But although I was familiar with needlepoint and used to seeing it, I was never terribly interested in doing it for myself. So I never tried it until I took a Victorian Handiwork seminar as an undergraduate. Since then, I’ve tried to keep my skills fresh, but I rarely have time for large projects.”

I had been gazing at Verity while she explained this. After all, she’s lovely, and I’m married to her—who could blame me? Unfortunately, this meant that I had not been gazing at the handful of sheep fluff I was engaged in mutilating. Glancing down, I realized the lump had somehow exploded. My black trousers were coated in sheep hair, interspersed with a few bits that looked suspiciously unlike sheep hair. How thoroughly had Kivrin washed her sheep, anyway?

Kivrin noticed my look but misinterpreted it. “Oh, are you finished with that one? Here’s another. You’re doing very well; just try to be a little more forceful.” My unwilling hands found themselves once again full of sheep.

Verity snipped a thread on her work with scissors and glanced up. “Oh, Ned, would you mind handing me that red wool?”

The wool I was holding was normal-sheep-colored, so that wasn’t what she was referring to. I glanced around the room, but the only traces of red I glimpsed were on the covers of a couple of my poor mistreated reference books. “What red wool?”

“The tapestry yarn, in the same basket with the black wool.”

I picked up the basket, but all it had was some white yarn and some odds and ends of yellow. I doubt that I could have mistaken red for either of them even if I were color blind, which I most definitely am not. “It’s not here.” I showed her the basket in case she doubted my veracity. “There’s yarn, but no red.” I suppose I hoped stating the obvious would somehow preclude me from being blamed for the absence of the required item. I had never seen the missing wool in my life, but I didn’t think that would help; after all, a year ago I had never seen the bishop’s bird stump in my life, and see how little that helped me.

“I can’t think what could have happened to it,” said Verity. “I hope it didn’t end up in that bag I donated yesterday.”

“Can you get more?” Polly asked.

“Ned could get you some!” Olivia suggested. “In some time periods, men’s main handcraft-related role was fetching supplies, wasn’t it? So it would be good for him to practice, just like we’re practicing.”

I’m sure I could have torn this logic to shreds if I had wanted to bother, but I seized on the chance to get away from Kivrin’s sheep. “Wonderful idea! Verity dear, would you like me to fetch you some red wool from the nearest shop?”

“I suppose. I need an 8-meter skein of DMC tapestry wool; the colorway is called ‘burgundy’, number 7139. It’s for Penwiper’s bow. I’d really appreciate it if you could get some for me—if you don’t mind, of course.”

“Anything for you, dear,” I said, throwing wool clumps onto the settee with abandon. After detouring to my room for a lint brush—followed by changing into new trousers upon abandoning hope that the first ones would ever be wool-free again—I rushed off to the shop, grateful for the respite from being surrounded by handcrafts.

* * *

If one wants relief from being surrounded by handcrafts, there are probably better places to go than to a craft supply shop. I realized this the moment I walked through the doors and almost turned to flee, but I mastered my baser instincts and marched up to the counter instead.

“Excuse me,” I said to the shopkeeper. “I need a skein of DMC tapestry wool in burgundy, number 7139.” Simple, direct; shouldn’t take long at all.

“Just a moment,” she said. “I’ll go look.”

Maybe I could stop at a yarn-free café to relax before I returned home. That would give Kivrin more time to run out of sheep lumps. And if they thought I had taken longer than I ought, I could always spin a story about how the first store hadn’t had any and I’d gotten lost trying to find another store that sold it.

The lady returned to the counter. “Is this what you’re looking for?” she asked, handing me a small dark red skein. 

I glanced at the various labels it bore. “Yes, thank you, this—wait, this says it’s cotton. I need wool.”

“Oh, wool!” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“I did say so,” I said firmly. “I need burgundy tapestry wool. DMC.”

Again I waited at the counter as the shopkeeper disappeared into the abyss and eventually reappeared.

“Here you are, burgundy wool,” she said.

This time I was suspicious from the start. The skein she handed me was much larger than the black wool I had handed Verity earlier. “Is this tapestry wool? For needlepoint?”

“Oh, you need yarn for needlepoint?” she replied. “This is for knitting.”

“Yes,” I said, “I need yarn for needlepoint. Wool yarn. Tapestry wool.”

“Are you sure?” she said, as she wandered off again.

“Burgundy DMC!” I called after her.

While I awaited her return, I glared around the room, looking for hidden cameras or perhaps a display selling “Souvenir of Iffley” plates. I saw neither at first glance, and debated whether it would be worthwhile to seek further; there were no other customers to misinterpret my behavior as odd, and the shopkeeper was away in the Void of All Non-Tapestry Wools.

“Here we are,” she said while I was still considering. “Needlepoint yarn.”

The skein was back to the proper size. I picked it up and—“This is cotton.”

“Oh, is it?” She tisked her tongue. “Oh dear.”

“Do you even carry tapestry wool?” I asked. Rather loudly, I must admit. “Tapestry wool. For needlepoint.”

“Let me go look,” she said, and vanished again. 

“I think this is tapestry wool,” she said when she returned. She held out a small skein that looked positively magenta.

I looked it over. It said “DMC Laine Colbert Tapestry Wool” on the band. But the number at the bottom was 7136. So close and yet so far.

“This is the wool I need, but it’s the wrong color,” I said. “I need 7139. Burgundy. Burgundy tapestry wool for needlepoint.”

“Ohhh, burgundy!” she said. She left the magenta on the counter with her other rejected offerings, and scurried off for what I hoped was the last time.

As she emerged again from the depths of the store, she was holding something red enough and small enough for me to feel hopeful. I snatched it from her as soon as she got within reach, and to my delight it still said “DMC Laine Colbert Tapestry Wool”, but this time it said “7139” below that. I had conquered the craft store!

“I’ll take this,” I said.

“Will that be all?”

“Yes. Yes, most definitely.”

She rang me up with far more speed than I would have expected of her after her previous actions, and I headed to the door. As I opened it, she called after me. “Sir? Sir, there’s something you should know about that tapestry wool.”

There was no way I was letting that hard-won wool out of my hands. But I turned and walked back to the counter anyway. “Yes?”

* * *

When I finally arrived home, Kivrin and her sheep had departed (thank goodness!) but Verity and the two undergraduates were still sitting, doing their crafts and attempting not to giggle. If I hadn’t been expecting this latter activity I might not have noticed—Verity was quite good at hiding it although the younger ones needed more practice—but I’ve spent too much time being bored in drawing rooms not to know what silent laughter looks like.

“I have returned with wool!” I announced in my most triumphant tones. With a flourish, I pulled out the red knitting wool while simultaneously sketching a complicated bow, concluding by laying the yarn at my lady’s feet. It looked quite impressive if I do say so myself, and I waited to see how they would respond.

Polly covered a smile with her hand; Olivia slouched so that her crocheting hid her face in a way she probably thought was subtle; and Verity leaned over to pick the yarn up. “That’s...certainly wool,” she said. “But I think it’s knitting worsted.”

“Oh yes!” I said. “I thought that might be a problem, so I got you these too.” I pulled out the two burgundy cottons.

“Umm...thank you,” Verity said. She looked them over. 

There was a long pause while Olivia continued to crochet with one elbow hooked over the back of the settee and her hand and bookmark in front of her face. It looked uncomfortable, and it wasn’t even serving to block her stifled snickers so she needn’t have bothered. Polly on the other hand had managed to resume a severe expression that conveyed no amusement whatsoever. 

“I’m afraid this is cotton,” Verity said. “They’re both cottons.”

“Are they?” I said. “How unfortunate. Let me see if I found anything else that might work.” I turned the bag upside down and shook it, and the last item in it—the magenta wool—fell on the floor. “Oh yes,” I said. “This said tapestry wool, so I thought it was probably right. But I wasn’t sure so I got you the others just in case. I couldn’t remember what color number you said, but this certainly looked burgundy.”

“That’s magenta, not burgundy!” Olivia exclaimed, still ineffectively covering her face with her bookmark. She was holding her arm in the air at a forty-five-degree angle that looked about as far from ergonomic as crocheting could possibly be.

Polly wasn’t trying to hide her laughter now, but she didn’t seem to be laughing at me so I suspected she’d caught on. “Haven’t scientists determined that females differentiate colors more than men?” she asked. “I can see how Ned might have mistaken that for burgundy.” She winked at me. Yes, she’d definitely caught on.

“But it’s magenta!” Olivia exclaimed again. She made another stitch, and her crochet thread fell off the settee to roll across the room (I suspected her odd posture had contributed to its demise). She jumped up and gave chase.

“Look at the time!” said Polly. “Olivia, if we’re to eat in hall we need to leave now.”

It was indeed late, and after a glance at the clock, both girls hurried to pack up their things and rush away. Verity accompanied them to the door, sending them off with a few last-minute pieces of advice for their projects.

While she latched the door, I walked up behind her. I pulled the last skein from where I had hidden it in my pocket and reached over her shoulder to dangle it in front of her. “Was this what you wanted?”

“Oh!” she laughed. “Then you didn’t really think the magenta was burgundy. When did you figure out the prank?”

“The shopkeeper gave me quite the runaround, but eventually she told me that one of you had called her up and asked her to play a trick on me.”

“I hope you didn’t mind.”

“No, it was a good joke. And I think I managed to give as good as I got.”

“That you did,” Verity said, taking the wool from me. “I didn’t realize you weren’t just confused until you pulled out the magenta tapestry wool, although I was a tad suspicious when you had two different cottons. Yes, this is what I needed.” She sat back down with her needlework. “And at least you got to practice buying wool from a contrary salesperson.”

“I hope I never need that practice for anything,” I said. “Now how would you like to practice cleaning up a messy sitting room with me?”

“Perhaps we’d better,” Verity said. “We have just enough time to tidy up before Kivrin gets back with the rest of her fleece.”

**Author's Note:**

> About.com has [an overview](http://historymedren.about.com/od/clothingandfabric/a/cloth_manufacture.htm) of the processing steps medieval wool went through. (In the story, Kivrin has sorted, washed, and possibly beaten her fleece; she omitted dying and greasing and is to the point of combing.)
> 
> There are indeed studies on men and women seeing colors differently, although probably not to the extent of confusing magenta and burgundy. Here’s a short [Smithsonian article](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/where-men-see-white-women-see-ecru-22540446/) on a 2012 study.


End file.
